Change the PDI Home Directory Location (.kettle folder)

The default location for the Pentaho Data Integration home directory is the .kettle directory in your system user's home directory.

Windows:C:\Documents and Settings\example_user\.kettle

Linux:~/.kettle)

There will be a different .kettle directory, and therefore a different set of configuration files, for each system user that runs PDI.

Standalone PDI client tool deployments

You can specify a single, universal .kettle directory for all users by declaring a KETTLE_HOME environment variable in your operating system. When declaring the variable, leave out the .kettle portion of it; this is automatically added by PDI.

export KETTLE_HOME=/home/pentaho/examplepath/pdi

BA Server deployments that run PDI content

If you followed a manual deployment or archive package installation path, you can set a system environment variable as explained above, but it must be declared before the BA Server service starts. You can alternatively change the CATALINA_OPTS system variable to include the -D flag for KETTLE_HOME, or you can edit the script that runs the BA Server and set the flag inline, as in this example from the start-pentaho.sh script:

Windows service modification

If you used the graphical utility to install the DI Server, then you must modify the Java options flag that runs the BA Server Tomcat service. Here is an example command that will change the value of KETTLE_HOME to C:\<examplepath>\pdi\.kettle: